Pool Party

We ended the day with a pizza picnic at the pool.

Levi loved the watermelon!

Our little ham loves the water just like Sissy does!

Daddy and the Kiddo's

We had a wonderful time at the pool with our neighbors and friends. Definitely a wonderful way to start summer vacation!

Last Day of Kindergarten

How do you celebrate the last day of school??? We went to Dairy queen for BLIZZARDS! The beginning of summer vacation and we kicked it off with a sweet and cool treat, perfect for a hot day in Texas!

Elliana has been obsessed with SHOPKINS lately, and apparently so is every other kid out there. The stores are sold out, but I was able to find this online and have had it for a couple of weeks. We decided to surprise her with it and some sweet treats for our summer movie fun days that starts on Monday!

We made sure that Levi did not miss out on any of the fun of course. He had his fair share of everybody's blizzards. He definitely have a sweet tooth. This little boy will never say no to anything sweet. 

Kindergarten Graduation

Elliana was super excited this morning about going to school. She called it a very special day. They have been practicing all week in school for today. We knew they were going to be singing, but she kept telling us that it was going to be a surprise and she could not wait for us to hear her sing. She picked out her outfit and made she that mommy put her hair in a special pony tail, without the fuzzies she said, because with the humidity her hair has been a mess lately. But we made sure this morning that it wouldn't be, so she got to use mommy's flat iron to straighten her hair. 

I do have to admit, i teared up a when she crossed the stage. A very symbolic way for the school to represent their graduation from kindergarten and crossing over to first grade. Very meaningful way to represent the kids growing up. But this morning, I felt like I didn't want her to grow up. But it is exciting to see her grow and learn. To be a part of her life and her journey, to embrace new beginnings of her life. Such a special little girl, very smart, very loving, caring and respectful. 

She loved her flower. 

With Principal McCune 

I do wish you all the best my dear, you have learned so much this year. You have learned to write, count, to read and you have so much more to learn. I am so proud of you and how well you have adopt to being in school and loving it everyday. 

Backyard Blackberries

 Casey planted a blackberry bush the end of the summer 2 years ago, last year we had a few blackberry before the birds got to it. Never thought we would get any blackberries last year so that was a plus. This year the blackberry bush grew with the record breaking rain we had. We have tried to get to them before the birds did. Levi enjoyed his share quite a bit.

We have been enjoying the outside a lot more that the weather has started to warm up and the rain has stopped. Elliana has always enjoyed the outside and it looks like Levi is the same. Every morning we wake up, he heads towards the garage door and bangs on it and wants to head out. Such amazing joy to see the kids smile. It definitely lights up my day and melts my heart to see them happy.

I have thought about starting a journal for my kids throughout the years. I always wondered where am I going to put all these important things in their lives and remember them. I picked up our blog every couple of years in the hope that I will maintain it and continue to journal the going on's in our busy lives. Today is an odd day, it's not a milestone in anyone's lives, it's not a day that I had to really jut anything down, but I thought it is perfect day to continue our blog. 

Levi is now 15 months old, and Elliana is 6. Our kids have grown so much for the last several years since I stopped writing. It's been quite a journey and everyone has been so busy but well worth it. Levi is just now starting to walk a lot more. He still does what we call hi zombie crawl, where one leg is under him and the right leg it up 90 degrees and he pushes off with his right hand. We think it's funny but love every bit of this little guy. 

Elliana on the other hand is graduating Kindergarten this year. We have 2 weeks left of school and she has learned so much. She is starting to read on her own. Counts to 100 and counts backwards. She currently loves anything art. We embrace this aspect of her life by encouraging her to draw more pictures, use as much colors as we wants. The next big craze in her life at these things call "Shopkins". I have never heard of it before either, but I would describe is as poly pockets in my kid days. They are small little things that are shaped like what you would find in the grocery store. 

Casey is currently a stay at home daddy for our two littles. I love it, since he takes care of the daily grind of keeping our kids safe, making sure things at home are maintained and we don't have to deal with sending our kids to day care and worrying about how things are going throughout the day. I know my kids are safe and will have a parent around to care for them. I think he enjoys the aspect of being able to be there for our kids, but I do think that he might feel he needs to go to work sometimes. But I see it as a period of our lives were we can sacrifice and provide what we hope is best for our life at this time. 

I for one have now transitioned to working day shift. After 10 years of the night shift I have recently moved to days and love every bit of it. I no longer have to worry about having to take a nap during the day, and feel so out of it when I have a day off. My day off begins the day before when I get hope at night and I feel so much rested. I have recently been toying with the idea of going back to school. It scares me to no end to think about going through school again, but I keep telling myself, if I don't do it now, when? There is never a good time I guess so here I am jumping back in. 

We recently as a family wanted to spend more time together and went on our first family road trip to Canyon, Tx. Amazing canyons in the the dessert land of Texas. The drive itself was not as bad as we thought it would be. The kids handled it well and we might be driving more soon. Here's to more adventures to come

"work? AGAIN?"

My thoughts exactly. That's what I wanted to tell my little 2 year old today during our conversation.
Elliana: mommy where are you going?
Me: to work
E: to work, AGAIN?
me: yes
E: why?
Me: so we have money and pay for our house?
E: oh ok. Old people have to work aaallll the time. (with her little 2 yr old voice and walking around the house with her hands spread out)

"Mommy, I was Speeding"

It's pretty funny to have a conversation with your little one's and how they make use of the words they hear from a day to day basis.

Today, Just before nap time as we sat in the toilet Elliana tells me, 

"mommy, look I hurt my knee". She had a scratch on her knee, probably from playing outside today. I asked her what happened, she say "I don't know it's aw wee," I said "did you hit your knee's outside?" she said "yes". I asked her, "how did you hurt it?" she then proceeds to tell me "I was speeding." I could not help but just laugh to hear things like this come out of her mouth. It's amazing how such little things like these, can brighten my day.

Potty Training

I haven't posted in a long while and I thought today would be a great day to start. 

The things our soon to be 3 year old say's are hilarious. I can't believe how fast she learns and pick up things. She is recently potty trained, we used the sticker system to train her. Each time she would pee in the potty she we would give her a sticker, and when she poops in the potty she got 2 stickers. This worked and we filled up a full sheet of paper with her stickers. When she had it all filled out she wanted a new paper. We took the old paper down and gave her a new sheet. After a couple of days of using the new sheet, she looked at me and said "mommy, I potty trained now, take this away" and sure enough we did. 

She has done a wonderful job with this. She uses our regular Toilet with her dora seat. She stays dry throughout her nap and she has been sleeping through the night and waking up in the mornings with dry underwear. She had 3 accidents so far, twice in the bed, once was during nap time when she said she was dreaming, the other was early in the morning when Casey was letting her play in the morning because she wasn't making too much noise and sounded like she was playing in her crib. And the last was the other day when she refused to go to the potty for me because she was so excited to come downstairs. 

Arts and crafts

Today I am thankful that I have the ability and opportunity to learn a new craft. These got Elliana very excited, especially when I told her it will be going on her new hat. She say's "Yay mommy, can I help too". I am also very thankful for technology, Skype session with the family today was awesome. Elliana really enjoyed it. Her word of the day today was, "duh". She learned it from no other than daddy. It's quite entertaining to hear a conversation with your 2 year old when they learn a new word, because she tried to use it with every sentence after that. All in all today was a great day.

Daddy's little helper

Elliana wanted to show mommy what she found in her new tool box today. Apparently she had been Daddy's helper, trying to get our closet ready to have our new floors put in. She said "mommy, look I help daddy." She was so excited too.